With the arrival of Peak Oil, the curtain has closed on Act 1 of the drama Petroleum Man. What will happen in Act 2? Chekhov said, "If there's a gun on the wall at the beginning of the play, by the end it must go off." In the world's nuclear arsenal are many guns on the wall. If life copies art, will there be an Act 3 in which the players, having learned their lesson the hard way, live sustainably? To explore these and other questions... FTW's Act 2 Blog. Read, comment, take heart! Orkin

Thursday, October 09, 2008

A WONDERFUL SIGN OF HOPE

Are we all worn out yet? After the events of this week and the debate, I felt like I'd just come through a war. Many are looking as if in shell shock. We're all just sitting back now and waiting for the economic bottom to spring from the uncertainty below us. We are waiting for the real trickle-down economics to do their brutal work. Yeah folks, this is what "Trickle Down" really means. (Tip of the hat to David Stockman.)--

Rest up people.

Somewhere back around 2002 I wrote something where I recall quoting an expert as saying that the Dow would be properly valued at around 6000. I agreed. Now, I have no confidence that 6000 will be a bottom. I justdon't know. But if Citigroup goes soon, I predict pretty much that the whole world will capitulate. That would be a really fast crash and very messy. The Great Depression was a series of capitulations from 1929 to 1932. The last capitulation was the most brutal as I recall. I may be wrong on that. I hear analysts talking about how this is much different because of all the post-Depression regulatory infrastructure. Bullshit! The post-Depression regulatory infrastructure is what was used to turn a serious-but-treatable infection into terminal cancer.

Human nature hasn't evolved much at all in eighty years either.

Sheriff Takes on Bankers

So here's something wonderful to cheer you up while you're catching your breath. It's about a really good cop; the kind that I tried to be. It's about a cop whose job it is to protect innocent people. It's about a cop who is refusing to evict tenants from foreclosed properties who are not behind in their rents. There are hundreds in his county, and he is THE Sheriff. He is the face of the law. His, the boots on the ground. This is a constitutional issue of enormous importance. A local sheriff is refusing to enforce state and federal laws. Can you imagine what would happen if the dagblasted FBI tried togo in and evict? (I know too many FBI jokes. -- They're all true.) Can you picture what would happen if armed sate police went up against armed county sheriffs? ...if the county sheriffs had the entire population of the county behind them? This is not hyperbole on my part. Read the last paragraph and connect the dots. They are on our map. TPTB are scared spitless by this, as well they should be. The Sheriff's holding all the aces and this might be as big as Lexington and Concord. It will be very interesting to see how the majors play this, or don't.

And now the corporations will have to crack the whip, stand up and say, I'm sorry, we run things around here. The ugly head rears.

Or maybe they will back down. Oh, how I wish a thousand county sheriffs would do this.

This is a sign that relocalization is already underway on many levels. This is a deep shift in public and political consciousness. The new era is springing up as we speak.

Yes, I predicted this too when I wrote years ago that people should not think of all badges the same way. As I saw collapse developing I saw a disintegration of top-down authority. I said that the local cops would protect the locals, even if it meant breaking the law to do it. That's why I came home for this part of the"transition". Local police have no choice. It's where they live too. Mark my words, no one will be able to back Sheriff Tom Dart down. And we just may have found a real hero. This could be a shot heard round the world. This is why I have always known that real martial law would be impossible as most people conceive it.

I remember an old Jeff Bridges alien-visitation movie. Don't recall the title. It was good though. In it, Bridges (the alien) looked at his human love interest and said regarding us humans, "You are at your best when things are worst." How true. How true.

Tom Dart is a genuine American hero in my book. How fortunate that he's the sheriff of Cook County (Chicago) Illinois, which is why his story got major media attention.

Now more than ever it's vitally important for us to really get to know our local elected officials and police. It's time to get off the sofa and get out into the community and start serving our neighbors. We might just need to be served ourselves someday ...

YES!!! THIS is what I have been waiting for! The people to WAKE UP and say NO to the bank! It is time we effect our own change, I pray that it can be done peacefully, but if needed we should be ready to do so with any means necessary. I hope the citizens of that county stand behind him and are ready to back him up at all costs, pitchforks and all.I hope he doesn't fold.Of course if he doesn't I'm sure there is a judge in their pockets that will hold him in contempt and try to arrest him (using which deputies, from where I ask?)... That's when it will simmer out or erupt into downright revolt.

Thank you very much for showing us this!

MCR, Jenna, btw how many visits do you guys have a day? And is it growing?

In response to the markets that just closed,... I love watching it! For the first time I'm starting to truly understand how Slim Pickens must have felt riding that nuke in. Its great fun to finally stop worrying and love the bomb.

I'd like to hear MCR's take on what those in control are doing right now. Before the bailout approval they were injecting money into the system to shore up the market. Now after the bailout approval the market is in free fall.

Have they decided to let the market go completely into free fall? Or are they trying to stop it and they can't?

Crossing the Rubicon was the first 9/11 book I ever read. And the Lies of 9/11 the very first video I ever saw on it. People thought I was NUTS. Thanks for all your work!

I just wanted to cross-reference the story of Dart with another idea about the housing crash found on Charles Hugh Smith's blog here:Of Two Minds - Houseing Crash

It illustrates why kicking out the renters hurts more than the innocent renters.

"Here are Pangolin's incisive comments:

Think of one fourth of the buildings in a neighborhood vacant and you have a place begging for scavengers to come and remove the rest of the neighborhoods property value. I tell you as a fact a crew of three guys can strip a house overnight and leave the neighbors clueless. Appliances, wires, pipes and fixtures gone; boom. They'll do it in contractors vans and they'll show you a printed work order. Easy as pie. In ten minutes an arsonist can be in and out and the place won't show a flame until it's too late hours later.

If somebody's not living in the house next door you, as a homeowner, now have a permanent source of worry; real big worry.

Some time soon homeowners (as opposed to mortgage paying tenants) are going to descend on local governments in a wrath and demand that vacant properties be occupied or maintained in a reasonable standard. Lawsuits will pile up, HOA liens will fly like fall leaves and town councils will get slapped awake by irate citizens.

Then there will be a proliferation of proposal that will amount to "use it or lose it" laws. Your vacant property may be seized, sold at auction for cash on the barrel-head to anybody who can demonstrate that they will a) occupy the property and b) have sufficient income/reserves to maintain it. There is nothing at all that makes this illegal. To the contrary laws have been adjusted to allow crony capitalists to seize property and build baseball stadiums, mini-malls and 'factory-outlets' with minimal fuss. It's also quite simple to tell a besieged banks legal department that the value of the property is exactly it's auction price in lieu of evidence of other buyers.

For several years banks will scream murder and property prices will dive but nobody is going to leave an empty house in their neighborhood if they can avoid it. Of course the results of this will make the bailout last week amount to a fart in a hurricane."

Anyhow, Mr. Ruppert, I've been following your work rabidly since finishing the first chapter of Rubicon in 2005. Thank you so much for coming back to us. I'm one person who's had a Google Alert notification for anything on your condition the past two years. For a long time, they were very sparse.

You are a true patriot, and -- like I tell everyone I know in the media, and community forums -- the bravest man in America.